Last night was clear — I planned and executed an imaging run.

I used CCDNavigator. The user interface caused me a fair amount of hearburn. It tries too hard to make the schedule work, so users who aren’t doing automated observing face edits that aren’t required for their use.

The software influenced my approach. A typical approach, emobodied in the software, is to use a stair step approach for taking your images. You start with the lower resolution color, and work up to the high resolution luminance. I have always evenly balanced my LRGB sub-images. I can’t say that I have a theory for doing so, and last night I accepted the approach indicated in the software. There is good reason to do so. When an object is lower in the sky, it is better to get low resolution data. I have not been binning my color, decided to tonight, so this was the approach.

So you take RGB away from the meridian crossing, and L just around it.

Overall it went well. Results will be posted later. However, a minor anomoly caused a problem. Normally I image with subimages taken L/R/G/B etc. With the RGB planned for early, I “grouped by slot”. and took shots RRRRRR/GGGGGG/BBBBB/LLLLLLL. The problem ocurred because the sky was too bright for the initial red exposures. They were all wasted. If I had done a patter of R/G/B/R/G/B…LLLLLL…R/G/B/R/G/B I would not have had the problem.

Live and learn.